How to format your references using the BMC Family Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BMC Family Practice. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

1. Zerhouni EA. Information access. NIH public access policy. Science. 2004;306:1895.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Berkman MB, Plutzer E. Science education. Defeating creationism in the courtroom, but not in the classroom. Science. 2011;331:404–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Poss KD, Wilson LG, Keating MT. Heart regeneration in zebrafish. Science. 2002;298:2188–90.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Vanroose W, Martín F, Rescigno TN, McCurdy CW. Complete photo-induced breakup of the H2 molecule as a probe of molecular electron correlation. Science. 2005;310:1787–9.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

1. Dimond B. Legal Aspects of Mental Capacity. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2016.

An edited book

1. Sandau R, Roeser H-P, Valenzuela A, editors. Small Satellite Missions for Earth Observation: New Developments and Trends. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Zohuri B, Fathi N. Laminar Incompressible Forced Convection. In: Fathi N, editor. Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis of Nuclear Reactors. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 117–81.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for BMC Family Practice.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. How Fish Fossils Can Help Us Build Better Submarines. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-fish-fossils-can-help-us-build-better-submarines/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018.

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

1. Government Accountability Office. Space Shuttle Facility Program: More Definitive Cost Information Needed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

1. Miller BA. “Parable-art” beyond the Auden generation: An examination of the message-bearing aspects and architecture of two twenty-first-century works for chorus and chamber orchestra. Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona; 2012.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

1. Nechepurenko I. Kremlin Group Viewed As a Propaganda Mill. New York Times. 2017;:A11.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	BMC Family Practice
Abbreviation	BMC Fam. Pract.
ISSN (online)	1471-2296
Scope	Family Practice